


Singularity

by pushdragon



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: AO3 1 Million, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2018-01-12 15:40:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1190577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pushdragon/pseuds/pushdragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Precisely no-one would be surprised to learn that Eames's version of limbo is a theatre.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Singularity

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a tribute to the brilliant multiplicity of ideas that comes out of an inspired fandom community. It's an older fic I've been meaning to archive here for ages. With AO3 celebrating it's millionth fanwork, now seems like the perfect time.
> 
> Edited to add: The fic itself is no more than G rating. I've ticked "Explicit" to cover the separate fics linked to within this story, which cover the whole spectrum - and you can make your own investigations and decisions about how to approach those fics.

Precisely no-one would be surprised to learn that Eames's version of limbo is a theatre.

Its stage is vast and the lights above it blinding, so that the gold framed velvet seats seem to extend row by row into nothingness. Instead of exit doors, the aisles lead to stairs which slant up to higher upon higher balconies. The backdrop is an ocean view, no land in sight, just numberless waves and a shade of sky that could be anywhere. 

The stage is empty. No-one answers Arthur's call. No-one claps. His shoes make a stark sound as he crosses stage left. 

Darkness descends once he reaches the wings, moving under enormous pulleys and cogs. Oversized relics from an age somewhere between bygone and imaginary, they menace him from on high, as if recognising that he has crossed from a public to a secret space. The walls grow closer until he is walking through a shoulder-width corridor, draped in red velvet and intermittently lit by gas lamps. 

"Eames?"

Arthur pushes on. One level back, the rest of the team will be kicking out of a job gone bad, leaving Eames's bullet-riddled body to the projections. Arthur can't bring their names to mind, or their waking destination. All he remembers is the dreadful warmth of blood under his hand as he'd felt inside Eames's jacket, the push of it beating out of him. 

"Eames!"

"Yes, sweetheart?"

Behind the curtain that Arthur tears aside is a doorway to a small room. A continuous white table runs along three walls, topped with square mirrors separated by rows of lights. [Eames](http://archiveofourown.org/works/103795) is leaning back against the table looking unutterably smug. His mouth looks swollen and wet, even more wanton than its usual.

“So, was it good for you?” Eames says, undiluted innuendo. “Mouth made for fellatio and all, I'd hate to disappoint.”

But that's wrong. His last glimpse of Eames flashes into memory. That last time his eyes flickered open, his bloody mouth the only colour left in his face, and focused on Arthur kneeling beside him, wearing a look that could only be described as contentment as he shut his eyes slipped into limbo for good.

"Sweetheart?" 

No. This is too Eames to be Eames. There is the sound of splashing nearby.

"Wait here," Arthur says, and forces himself to return to the corridor.

It's easy now he knows the trick. The next curtain he pulls back leads to a palm-fringed swimming pool, beside which [Eames](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1109714) reclines in swimming trunks and sunglasses. Arthur's attention slips from the dark haired, impeccably dressed bartender behind him, to the slender, dark haired pool boy, to the attentive, dark-haired lifeguard. 

"I'm fucking mad about you," Eames says as the curtain falls closed. 

No. Yes - obviously yes - but no. 

In the next room, the mirrors and lights reflect a smoky jazz club, candlelit tables, music in the background. [Eames](http://mirabellafic.dreamwidth.org/2387.html) is shifting bodies – a slender blonde; a long-haired brunette with classic curves.

"I don't know what's going on in that pretty head, Arthur," he whispers as he turns back into himself, or someone like him. "Tell me and we'll talk it out, yeah?"

That room is even harder to leave than the last. In the next one, [Eames](http://archiveofourown.org/works/279357) is as close to skin and bone as Arthur can imagine, huddled against the wall, murmuring something in Spanish that makes no sense to Arthur's ears. 

The empty rooms are lonely. In one, Arthur finds nothing but cell phones. _If I lied, if I was nearby, what would you do?_ reads the message on [one](http://archiveofourown.org/works/485424) of them; on [another](http://archiveofourown.org/works/485417) a click on the tag "willbethedeathofme" reveals his own face. Then come random objects: a pair of ridiculously tall black [ high heels](http://archiveofourown.org/works/114455) in a large size; a [vibrator](http://tornadobelt.livejournal.com/790.html) trembling softly; a [mack truck](http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/17044.html?thread=35979412#t35979412).

Finally Eames is present again – showing up everywhere, and nowhere. [Looking up](http://archiveofourown.org/works/112706) from a hand of cards to tell Arthur to go fish; [lying](http://archiveofourown.org/works/125707) on an office floor with pillows under his back and his desktop projected onto the ceiling; [strapping](http://archiveofourown.org/works/173119) a toddler to his back.

Arthur struggles to discern some kind of meaning in it. Consistency. Some scattered truth. Sometimes he sees glimpses of the Eames he thinks he knows. [Holding](http://archiveofourown.org/works/135917) a kitchen knife in a sliced open hand that drips blood; [walking](http://archiveofourown.org/works/135925) down the red carpet with a field of flashbulbs going off on either side. He is [bathing](http://archiveofourown.org/works/364949) in money; he is [battering](http://archiveofourown.org/works/118140) out a romance novel; he is [leaning](http://tornadobelt.livejournal.com/5552.html) over a tombstone with a red rose in his hand. He is [sketching](http://archiveofourown.org/works/170021) a little blue bird onto vellum; he is [walking](http://archiveofourown.org/works/842751) across a desert with his footprints vanishing behind him.

But just as Arthur feels an inkling of understanding, the romantic shifts into the ridiculous. There is Eames [unpacking ](http://tequilideas.livejournal.com/17088.html) a bag full of jumpers and condoms; [queueing up](http://archiveofourown.org/works/143468) for a prison phone call; he's [hiding](http://archiveofourown.org/works/190077) under a Russian gangster's bed; he's [glaring](http://archiveofourown.org/works/157744) at a mammoth python; [waking up](http://mirabellafic.dreamwidth.org/16149.html#cutid1) among vampires; [bathing](http://archiveofourown.org/works/166171) a stolen penguin. From the disturbing to the surreal, the following [Eames](http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/7339.html?thread=10896555) writes across the mirror "CEILING ARTHUR IS WATCHING ME"; the [Eames](http://tequilideas.livejournal.com/14068.html) after that is sleeping curled up in a corner with a frisbee in his hands and the [next](http://archiveofourown.org/works/195384) throws his head back and howls at the moon.

From one room to the next he changes costume. Here, he wears sweat pants and a t-shirt while [stretching](http://archiveofourown.org/works/147810) at the barre. The next rooms take him from a [croupier's uniform](http://archiveofourown.org/works/175115) to a [chef's whites](http://archiveofourown.org/works/109132), and then finally nothing but [ a skimpy massage towel](http://archiveofourown.org/works/167017).

Though his mouth keeps its inviting curve from one incarnation to the next, what comes out of it might be anything, from [bittersweet](http://archiveofourown.org/works/153587) German love songs to [barely comprehensible slang](http://archiveofourown.org/works/209225). His age, too, seems to bend like elastic. A short stretch of corridor takes him from [fully fledged adult manhood](http://cherrybina.livejournal.com/166960.html?thread=8613424#t8613424) in combat pants and abundant weaponry, to [big eyed and devastatingly youthful](http://skellerbvvt.livejournal.com/71150.html), fastened to the head of a bed.

How many of these are Eames? Are they things he has been, or could be, or dreamed of? If Arthur takes back one, what will become of the others? What will become of the ones he didn't choose?

The corridor has no end that Arthur can see. 

Eames is [sending off](http://archiveofourown.org/works/122781) for a mail-order groom. He is [rehearsing](http://archiveofourown.org/works/166222) Stoppard. He is [cooking](http://archiveofourown.org/works/177509) pork chops and roast potatoes.

Arthur turns around and retraces his steps, past the curtained off rooms, past the fragments of personality, past the ropes and flats and pulleys.

The stage is still empty, but in the ninth row back, one last Eames is frowning at the open notebook across his lap, making notes on some unseen performance. There are no marks of trade or history upon him. He is naked, bare even of the tattoos that tell a story not wholly his own. He is nothing but muscle, and potential. 

"Hi," Arthur says. 

Eames smiles, and yes – that one gesture, the generously shared warmth of his smile, that is the one constant that takes all of his multiple reflections and unites them into something singular. 

Arthur asks him, "Who are you?"

Eames picks up his pen. He writes into the palm of his left hand, careful letters like an engraving that won't allow for correction. 

He holds out his hand and draws his fingers open in a miniature echo of the curtains in front of him. 

_Yours_ , the writing says. The one and only mark on the newly blank canvas of his skin.

Eames looks at him as if to say _And you?_

Arthur could not say he is completely free of doubt. In his mind's eye are so many possibilities.

But when he reaches into his back pocket, there is a Glock there. 

"I'm here to bring you back," he says, and pulls the trigger twice. 

 

**


End file.
